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A review by alisonjfields
The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
4.0
I grew up in the mountains of Western North Carolina in a small city notable for its hippies and weirdos and just a hop, skip and jump away from a university where Edward Abbey taught English and raged against machines for a minute or two. My dad was pretty environmentally motivated. And I'm pretty sure "The Monkey Wrench Gang" made its way into dinner conversation several times in my youth. This may have been why I never read it as a teenager* like the rest of my friends did.
I remember when a bunch of my friends went all gung-ho Earth First!-y somewhere around my Senior Year. I wasn't swayed, largely for aesthetic reasons. (I was seventeen at the time. I was that shallow)
I think I tried to read this book in college. It kept coming up. It was always gone from the library, sometimes stolen. It never showed up at the used bookstores. And I was desperately afraid it would be terribly earnest and no fun at all, like the hippies of my youth in their wooly socks and prayers for the trees.
So, I was surprised, upon finally reading "The Monkey Wrench Gang," to find that I liked it. It is, in fact, a rollicking, exaggerated western that gallops along to the end with lots of good (and bad) jokes and lots of ideological gray area. His titular gang is comprised of four mostly !@#$-ed up individuals, whose commitment toward preserving the environment at not-quite-all costs, is just about the purest thing about them. Otherwise they are played for comedy, for sex appeal, for commentary and utter batshit crazy but loveable black-hatted outlaw nonsense. There are some great digressive paranoid Pynchonian riffs and a some edge of the seat explosion/evasion scenes that are straight out of your favorite Western train robbery. Less impressive are Abbey's occasional detours into the same kind of wiseassed-horny-old-man-talks dirty-with an-impossibly-hot-impossibly-cool-walking-centerfold-of-a-heroine crap that tends to turn me off of Tom Robbins. It's definitely a fun read. And given where we've progressed (or haven't) with regards to protecting the environment, this book still feels remarkably timely.
* It may have been victim of what I like to call the "My Mom thinks Tom Robbins is awesome" problem. It's hard to find pleasure in the transgressions of the things your parents (and your parents' friends) find edgy and cool.**
** Which probably also accounts for my lack of enthusiasm toward The Doors, The Grateful Dead, Kurt Vonnegut, Ernest Hemingway and anything smelling remotely of Wicca and patchouli. This also goes some way in explaining how loving Henry James always felt faintly subversive.
I remember when a bunch of my friends went all gung-ho Earth First!-y somewhere around my Senior Year. I wasn't swayed, largely for aesthetic reasons. (I was seventeen at the time. I was that shallow)
I think I tried to read this book in college. It kept coming up. It was always gone from the library, sometimes stolen. It never showed up at the used bookstores. And I was desperately afraid it would be terribly earnest and no fun at all, like the hippies of my youth in their wooly socks and prayers for the trees.
So, I was surprised, upon finally reading "The Monkey Wrench Gang," to find that I liked it. It is, in fact, a rollicking, exaggerated western that gallops along to the end with lots of good (and bad) jokes and lots of ideological gray area. His titular gang is comprised of four mostly !@#$-ed up individuals, whose commitment toward preserving the environment at not-quite-all costs, is just about the purest thing about them. Otherwise they are played for comedy, for sex appeal, for commentary and utter batshit crazy but loveable black-hatted outlaw nonsense. There are some great digressive paranoid Pynchonian riffs and a some edge of the seat explosion/evasion scenes that are straight out of your favorite Western train robbery. Less impressive are Abbey's occasional detours into the same kind of wiseassed-horny-old-man-talks dirty-with an-impossibly-hot-impossibly-cool-walking-centerfold-of-a-heroine crap that tends to turn me off of Tom Robbins. It's definitely a fun read. And given where we've progressed (or haven't) with regards to protecting the environment, this book still feels remarkably timely.
* It may have been victim of what I like to call the "My Mom thinks Tom Robbins is awesome" problem. It's hard to find pleasure in the transgressions of the things your parents (and your parents' friends) find edgy and cool.**
** Which probably also accounts for my lack of enthusiasm toward The Doors, The Grateful Dead, Kurt Vonnegut, Ernest Hemingway and anything smelling remotely of Wicca and patchouli. This also goes some way in explaining how loving Henry James always felt faintly subversive.